GlavPivTorg — a window onto history

GlavPivTorg is not just a brewpub. It is also a theme restaurant.
The name is a Soviet-style acronym meaning "Main Beer Cooperative,"
and the place is designed to look like an elite Soviet restaurant from
the 1960s. This is the sort of place where the high-level Soviet
apparatchik would dine. Even the menu is designed according to the
state cookery manual for restaurants.

The location is also well-chosen. This was formerly the Soviet
Foreign Ministry, and the notorious
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939
was signed on the ground floor here. That's already plenty historical,
but there are some far more sinister associations, to which we'll
return below.

The overall impression of the restaurant is a vaguely office-like
or library-like look, with yellowish wood, deep green carpets, big
bookshelves, and the chiffon curtains that seem to be obligatory in
Soviet-era restaurants. There's also some modern art that apes
traditional Soviet propaganda art, busts of Lenin, some Soviet-era
maps on the walls, and even a desk with ancient telephones and other
office equipment from bygone days.

The beer

The beer, surprisingly, is very much in the Czech tradition, and is
even served in Czech-style mugs. The
Stolovoye (Table) was a fairly
straightforward Svetly Lezak (Bohemian pilsner), nice, drinkable, and
a good notch above your average industrial pale lager. The
Temnoye
Barkhatnoye (Dark Velvet) was again Czech-style, but this time a Tmavy
(dunkel). Full, roasty caramelly taste with some burnt licorice and a
good bit less hops than the Stolovoye. Something was wrong with the
Krasnoye Karamelnoye (Red Caramel), probably the tap lines, so we'll
pass over that.

The star of the show, however, was the
Nefiltrovannoye
(unfiltered), a pale lager. The taste was mainly grainy fruity honey
with notes of dry straw, spice, and resin. There's a buttery
background, and a faint slickness to the mouthfeel. It's smooth and
pleasant, yet full-flavoured and complex, the sort of beer I could
happily drink by the bucket.

I see this again and again: the unfiltered, fresh lagers are the
best lagers. They are generally only available close to the source,
which means one doesn't see them very often. It really is a shame, as
these beers are often magnificent.

When we visited we were met at the door by a waitress, who led us
past a playroom for kids, where a woman dressed as a clown was happily
engaged in a pillow fight with a little boy, up a staircase, and to a
table by the windows. It was a pleasant, quiet spot in the restaurant,
with deep leather armchairs, and a great view of Lubyanka Square.
There we were served excellent pelmenni (Russian dumplings) and hot
soup, a perfect antidote to the bone-chilling Siberian cold outside the
windows.

Through which window, by the way, we can see the famous toy store
Children's World, built during the Soviet era, and once the biggest
toy store in Europe. It's an odd location for a toy store, as right
across the square is what Muscovites used to refer to as Adult's
World, the prison that also served as the headquarters of the KGB (and
the NKVD before it). It was the gateway through which many tens of
thousands were led to torture, execution, or a decade of slow
suffering in the Gulag.

So there I sat, in my leather armchair, sipping excellent
Czech-style beer, and reading Solzhenitsyn's account of the
soul-crushing experience it was to arrive into the Lubyanka as a
prisoner.